"Domain Oriented Architecture" : Unleashing the power of co-creation in modern enterprise architecture
In today's fast-paced business environment, the ability to adapt and innovate is crucial to ensuring sustainability. Companies need a solid framework that, while supporting their expansion, also ensures that technology and processes are perfectly aligned with their business objectives.
This is where the Domain Oriented Architecture (DOA) approach comes into its own. It offers an innovative methodology that enables enterprise architects to design with precision and agility. They stop focusing on the purely conceptual aspects of architecture and concentrate instead on creating value for customers (whether internal or external to the company).
But what exactly is this all about? What is this innovative approach that is only just emerging?
What is Domain Oriented Architecture?
The "Domain Oriented Architecture" approach emphasises a deep understanding of the different business domains as a basis for guiding architecture choices. Domains can be specific to a business sector or to a particular function within a company.
This approach applies as much to IT infrastructure and software as it does to business processes. Its objective is to fully understand the real needs and experiences of users or consumers of services. It takes architects out of their ivory towers and invites them to interact with domain managers to enrich their thinking.
The strength of this approach lies in
- the creation of clear boundaries around the different areas. This allows teams to work independently and maintain a clear understanding of the problem space within their specific domain.
- The creation of a common vocabulary that ensures that technical and non-technical stakeholders can communicate effectively.
- modularity, which allows the system or process to be broken down into smaller, more manageable elements.
Companies can therefore find in this approach a response to their need for agility.
Going further with co-Creation
The complexity of organisational architecture often exceeds the capabilities of a centralised team of architects. At Bizliner by Contraste, we believe that the solution lies in the co-design of enterprise architecture.
A central architecture team focuses on centralising information, using a common language and ensuring appropriate governance across the organisation. But the real architecture work takes place within the various IT and business areas. The central team consolidates the architectural information used by all the domains.
To support the quality work of each domain, we create an "architecture back office" responsible for support, editing, completeness, quality management and handling repetitive architectural tasks.
Major benefits
Domain Oriented Architecture offers a host of benefits that transcend the traditional boundaries between technical and business teams:
- Improved collaboration: Thanks to a common language, technical and business teams communicate more effectively.
- Greater scalability: It becomes easier to evolve individual domains without affecting the whole system.
- Greater flexibility: Companies can pivot and make changes to specific domains or services without disrupting the whole ecosystem.
- Reduced complexity: By breaking down complex systems into manageable domains. It allows enterprise architects to focus on the subtleties of each domain independently.
- Facilitated knowledge transfer: The approach ensures that knowledge relating to specific domains is integrated into those domains. This means that new team members can work quickly and easily on specific areas of the system.
Bizliner by Contraste and the future of your enterprise architecture
Our aim is to integrate the different points of view of all stakeholders. Our co-design approach involves taking into account the needs, experiences and expectations of the whole organisation and evaluating their ideas. Through this inclusive and pragmatic approach, enterprise designs are put in place for successful production.
With Domain Oriented Architecture, Bizliner by Contraste introduces co-design into the organisation. It improves operations, modernises interactions between IT and the business, and improves user understanding and acceptance of organisational changes and the role of architecture.